1. Statement of the Technical Field
The inventive arrangements relate to imaging systems, and more particularly to systems and method for reducing the total number of bits required to be transferred over a communications link for the image.
2. Description of the Related Art
There are various conventional imaging systems known in the art. The conventional imaging systems are often used in the television industry for capturing video and communicating the video to a plurality of remote viewing devices (e.g., televisions and computers). In this regard, each of the conventional imaging systems comprises a camera for capturing images and generating data describing the captured images. The data is subsequently communicated to a video recorder and/or television station. The video recorder records the data for later use. The television station forwards the data to the remote viewing devices via wired and/or wireless communications links. The wired communication links include optical fibers and/or coaxial cables coupled between the television station and the remote viewing devices. The wireless communications links can include optical fibers and/or coaxial cables coupled between the television station and a dish antenna. The dish antenna transmits RF signal including the data to the remote viewing devices via a satellite.
A certain amount of overall bandwidth exists for communicating the data over the optical fibers and/or coaxial cables. The overall bandwidth is shared between a plurality of television channels. In this regard, each television channel is allocated a portion of the overall bandwidth for communicating the data over the optical fibers and/or coaxial cables.
Full High Definition (FHD) video data requires more bandwidth (e.g., 5 Mbit/s) to communicate over the optical fibers and/or coaxial cables than is available for a given television channel. As such, an encoder is typically employed for compressing the FHD video data prior to communication from the camera to the video recorder and/or television station. The data compression is performed to reduce the bandwidth required to communicate the FHD video data (e.g., from 843 Mbit/s to 5 Mbit/s). Additional compression is completed to further reduce the bandwidth required to communicate the FHD video over disadvantage links (e.g., from 5 Mbit/s to 1 Mbit/s). The data compression typically involves the following operations: (a) mapping a plurality of pixels to one pixel (e.g., 4 pixels to one pixel); and/or (b) processing the FHD video data to discard a portion thereof so as to crop the image.
Despite the advantages of the above-described conventional encoding techniques, they suffer from certain drawbacks. For example, in the mapping scenario, the detail of an image is undesirably reduced. In the cropping scenario, graphics existing along a border of an image are eliminated from the image. As a result, situational awareness is undesirably reduced.
Therefore, there is a need for an improved encoding technique that facilitates the transfer of FHD video data over optical fibers and/or coaxial cables without significantly affecting the quality of overall images (i.e., the image fidelity and situational awareness). Also, the improved encoding technique should be useful in military and security applications in which the overall bandwidth available for communicating video data is significantly smaller as compared to that of television applications.